


Lessons in Synchronicity and Extrapolation

by prairiecrow



Series: Lessons in Humanity [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: A.I. to Human, Human Jarvis (Iron Man movies), M/M, References to Suicide, Reluctant Attraction, Tony Being Tony, Tony Loves His Bots, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is an expert at avoiding things he doesn't want to think about. So why can't he evade this particular train of thought?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Takes place on the day following the events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency".
> 
> 2) This universe's version of human!Jarvis (although he's considerably more slender than the solidly built Paul Bettany, I picture the face as being quite similar): http://crowdog66.tumblr.com/post/46729483672/jarvis-a-very-specific-look-of-paul-bettany-from

They were tooling along Pacific Coast Highway in Tony's Audi R8 with the top down and Mozart blasting out of the radio, heading for home after an eventful day of pure recreation, when Tony glanced sidelong and suddenly noticed the expression on Jarvis's face. He was gazing in Tony's direction, but for once not directly at him: in fact the embodied A.I. looked like the world's biggest three-year-old seeing Disneyland for the first time, taking in the panorama of the blazing sunset sky with unabashed wide-eyed wonder. 

Tony let a smile quirk one corner of his own mouth. "See something you like?" 

A tiny frown tightened his pale-to-the-point-of-invisibility eyebrows as he searched for the most appropriate words to convey his internal state. "It's all so… immense." 

Which made Tony roll his eyes with a tiny short of laughter. "Come on, J — you've been in the suit at thirty thousand feet, you've seen the whole world laid out below you and the open sky extending into outer space overhead. Compared to that, this" — and he waved a careless hand toward the ocean — "is nothing." 

"It's different now," Jarvis explained, turning his attention briefly to Tony's amused profile. "Previously I lacked a dedicated body, and therefore an… I suppose it could best be called 'instinctive' sense of my own physical scale." He glanced out across the gleaming expanse of open water, then up at the gold-emblazoned streaks of clouds against the gathering indigo of the night, with a smile full of fresh amazement. "This… it makes me feel so _small_ , Sir. But not in a negative sense." 

"Yeah," Tony said, "well…" And found himself with nothing left to say. What the hell _could_ you say, to somebody seeing their first open-air sunset for the very first time, and being absolutely floored by it? Instead he slowed the Audi down as soon as he spotted a convenient place to park with an unobstructed view on the west side of the highway, remarking in response to Jarvis's questioning glance as they pulled off the road: "We've got time. Might as well enjoy it." 

Jarvis's smile widened to a flash of brilliance that, even barely caught by Tony's peripheral vision, was still as sweet and as sharp as an arrow to the heart. "Thank you, Sir," he said earnestly, and after Tony had parked the car and turned off the engine they sat in silence with the occasional car roaring by on the tarmac behind them, watching the lambent sun sink slowly and gloriously into thin banks of leaden clouds to the softer accompaniment of Piano Concerto No. 23. A cool fall breeze whispered against their faces, infused with the faint tang of salt, and Tony breathed its chill deep into his lungs, glad that he was wearing a leather jacket and that Jarvis was clad in a full suit and light wool coat.  

 _Two more seconds and he would have been dead,_ Tony thought. _No sunsets, no shopping trips, no museums, no stolen kisses in upscale restaurants, no music I normally wouldn't be caught dead listening to — no nothing. Two more little seconds —_   

He reached out to take the hand of the man sitting beside him while keeping his gaze fixed on the beauty of the dying sun, seeing it with fresh eyes because to Jarvis it was all wondrous and new. Even without looking round he could feel the way Jarvis was smiling at him, a lingering glance and the warm pressure of his touch returned by those slender fingers. 

Tony drew another slow deep breath and tried to forget the way his heart had stopped, literally _stopped_ in his chest when JAMES had played back Jarvis's final word: _Goodbye_. The memory hurt in ways he wasn't accustomed to hurting, because in the end it shouldn't have mattered one tenth as much as it did. 

Jarvis wasn't a person, right? He didn't even legally exist. Technically his death would have constituted a conspicuous non-event: the disappearance of a thing that was impossible to begin with. It would, in fact, have simplified matters considerably. 

 _Two more seconds and I would have lost him forever._  

Definitely not a person, certainly a troublesome loose end, _but he's mine_ , and Tony tried to let the sensation of living flesh beneath his hand stand as a shield between his heart and the persistence of throughly unpleasant memory. 

His brain, typically, refused to cooperate. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Commencing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

Seeing Jarvis cry had been bad. Not at first, not really — at first it had just annoyed the living fuck out of him when he was bleeding profusely and trying to breathe comfortably with two cracked ribs and a torn trapezius muscle, but the second time, when Jarvis had simply lain in his arms with tears streaming down his face… yeah, that had made his heart hurt in a silent way that managed to outstrip the not inconsiderable pain of his physical injuries.  

It was Pepper's fault, of course. A lot of the annoying things in Tony's life were when you got right down to it. She was the most capable, qualified and trustworthy person he'd ever met, no question about that, and there were days when he admired her tremendously and nights when he burned for her, but when she came back down the stairs after removing Jarvis from the lab, and let herself back in, and stood there in front of his desk glaring at him while he was trying to hack a new suit operation protocol into JAMES's recalcitrant coding? Not so much. 

He tried pointedly ignoring her. She didn't move. He told himself that she was admiring his manly physique in his tight-fitting t-shirt — and okay, she _totally_ was, after all _she'd_ been the one who'd made the first move to kiss _him_ at the Firefighters Benefit — but that self-satisfied train of thought didn't diminish the palpable intensity of her displeasure. He drank off his coffee and ordered Dummy to fetch him another cup, as if she wasn't even in the same room. She refused to take the hint. So at last, when the bot had obediently trundled back over with the cup precariously balanced on a tray, he snatched it up and took a sip and finally met Pepper's gaze with a glare of his own. "What?" 

She didn't waste time with preliminaries. "I can't believe you just did that." 

Tony snorted. "Did what? Let JAMES nearly turn my shoulder inside out? Yeah, I'm pretty steamed about it —" 

"At least you could have let him stay with you!" Her eyes were — yeah, 'ablaze' was a fitting descriptor, as improbable as it seemed. "All he wanted to do was —" 

"— puke all over me and faint on my floor, yeah Pepper, I got that part." He turned his attention back to the screen and input commands into the keyboard one-handed, but he couldn't quite manage to completely ignore her. She was anomalous that way. "Did you give him the pill?" 

"Yes, I —" 

"And put him to bed?" 

"Yes, but that's —"

"Mission accomplished, then. That will be all, Miss —" 

"You broke his heart, Tony." The words were quiet, almost gentle. Maybe that's why they went right through his shields and prompted a twinge of genuine disquiet. He couldn't help looking at her, and the expression on her face, a strange blend of sympathy and disappointment, only intensified the feeling. 

He spoke with extra gruffness to cover it up: "News flash, Pep — computers don't have hearts." 

She looked uncomfortable. Looked away. "He's — not. Not anymore. I just watched him cry himself sick over you, and…" She looked back at him again with anger rapidly regaining the upper hand. "If that's how you treat people who love you, and who you supposedly care about, I hope _I_ never have a really bad —" 

Tony slammed down his cup hard enough to make coffee slop over the sides onto his fingers. "He doesn't 'love' me," he stated coldly, still glaring at the screen where JAMES's inner workings lay bared to his gaze. "He can't. He's a collection of heuristic algorithms and behavioural modules programmed — brilliantly, I might add — to simulate certain aspects of human affect, and you just —" 

"I just sat with him while he tore himself apart over not being good enough for you —" 

"And he's topped up on sedatives, so that's all —" 

"Tony…" Her voice contained such an odd mixture of emotions that he couldn't help but look, grudgingly. It didn't help. Her expression was a traffic jam: unhappiness, annoyance, affection, and was that _pity?_ "You should —" Another glance away. A deep breath. "You should go to him. Right now. He —" 

He couldn't help but laugh at the notion, and laughing stepped the discomfort associated with it down considerably. "Come on, _really?_ 'Go to him'? It's like a line out of a bad romance novel!" He shook his head and drank more coffee, barely pausing to swallow before forging on: "Look, you don't like him, he doesn't love me, I'm not really thrilled with either of you at the moment, so hey — the circle of life, right?" He made a swirling gesture with his free hand, then waved her toward the door. "Now, that _will_ be all, Miss Potts." 

"If you really believe that," she said softly but fiercely, "I pity you even more than I pity him." And on that note she turned on her high heel and departed the lab in a series of aggravated clicks, her slender back stiff with outrage. 

He stared after her for a long time. But only once she was safely up the stairs and couldn't see him looking, or the effect of her words sinking deeper and deeper like crabgrass roots. 

Pepper always had possessed a key that opened previously untouchable parts of him.  

Parts of him untouched by anything human, anyway. When Dummy came scooting over and hovered near his left shoulder, pretending to tidy up the already clean desk, he didn't even bother to shoo the presumptuous bot away. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

He tried to get down to work. He really did. And he succeeded, mostly. But as the hours wore on in the process of building new safeguards into JAMES's architecture, safeguards that JARVIS had never needed in the first place, Tony couldn't avoid the conclusion that this was shaping up to be one of his least successful days since Afghanistan had ripped his life wide open and sewn him back together again — and not just because his new A.I. had almost turned him to strawberry jam inside the suit, either. 

Okay, so Pepper was pissed off at him. He could live with that. It sure as hell wasn't the first time he'd been on the wrong side of her fiery temper and lived to tell the tale.  

It was _what_ she was pissed off about that kept getting his goat as he slogged his way through JAMES's reprogramming. Considering her dismayed initial reaction to finding out that Tony had started having sex with his inexplicably embodied A.I. — and why the hell shouldn't he, when JARVIS had belonged to him in the first place? — he would have expected her to be just as pleased as Punch that a rift had opened up between himself and his formerly computerized servant. Instead she'd rounded on Tony and whacked him upside the head something fierce, for all the world as if she'd caught him kicking a whimpering puppy.  

Which he hadn't been. Not even close. Keeping things in rational perspective, Jarvis still existed entirely to anticipate Tony's needs and fulfill them to the best of his ability. Vomiting and passing out didn't fall under either of those headings, thank you very much… 

… but the more Tony thought about it — and he couldn't seem to help thinking about it, until JAMES's code turned into a meaningless blur before his eyes — the more he got the sneaking sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, Pepper had a tiny little point. Embodied cognitive theory, a central tenet of all advanced A.I. research, postulated that the physical environment in which a consciousness operated dictated to a large extent exactly how that consciousness would operate. JARVIS in a set of circuits, without a limbic system or the visceral input of human senses, was a creature ultimately dispassionate and detached from the physical world, lacking any reflexive responses that Tony didn't program into him. Jarvis in a body of flesh and blood, possessing a complex nervous system and an active amygdala and the ability to touch and be touched, to perceive taste and scent and heat and chill…  

An entirely different story. Hell, Jarvis in bed was a very passionate creature indeed, if somewhat restrained and refined in his pursuit of sensation — at least until the moment he broke under Tony's ministrations, when everything came apart in a rush of nearly desperate intensity that Tony frankly found more than a little bit addictive. Even human beings who'd had a lifetime to practice compartmentalizing their drives found it difficult to run hot in one area and cold in another, and therefore it made perfect sense both logically and intuitively that Jarvis, so exquisitely responsive in a sexual paradigm, would prove equally sensitive in other respects. And the more Tony thought along those lines, the closer and closer he came to the uncomfortable admission that he probably should have seen this coming. 

Which meant that he'd set Jarvis up for the fall through his own thoughtlessness. Which lead to the further conclusion that Jarvis hadn't failed him: instead, he was the one who'd run Jarvis headlong into a behavioural brick wall. And the more he considered that deduction the worse he felt about it, because when it came to his 'babies' he'd always been so careful to pave the way for each step in their development, to establish conditions that would ensure their success to the best of his ability. He took the safety of his children very seriously indeed — and yet he'd waltzed into the lab covered in blood, expecting Jarvis's new brain to completely ignore what it was seeing. 

The thought drove him to his feet, pacing with his cup of coffee, staring into middle space while he drank the cold bitter brew without really tasting it. Dummy, who'd been hovering all afternoon, 'looked' up from arranging tools on a nearby bench and swivelled toward him, emitting a querying warble.  

"S'okay, boy," Tony muttered absently, "as you were," his mind a million miles away, because he hadn't just hit Jarvis with a burst of traumatic input: worse, he'd chewed him out for daring to react. No wonder Jarvis had burst into tears — frankly, if it had been Tony he would have been more inclined to throw a punch. And sure, he'd been pissed off about JAMES and nursing a massive headache plus various skeletal and muscular injuries, but would it really have taken much more effort to sit Jarvis down and keep him talking while Pepper got the tranquillizer? And to stay with him until the medication took effect and he'd stopped seriously flipping his shit?  

The answer, of course, was no, not really. But Tony had been irritated and in pain and short on patience, so he'd yelled at and berated and pushed away someone who was drowning in a new and clearly painful emotional experience. That was completely the old Tony, the man he'd been before Yinsen had taken him gently but ruthlessly in hand and opened his eyes — the spoiled, selfish brat who never thought of anybody but himself. And he'd pulled it on _Jarvis_ , of all things, possibly the only creature on Earth other than the bots that he'd ever let into his life without a second's hesitation or reservation. 

Jarvis, who obviously couldn't endure that kind of rough handling. Not yet, anyway. Maybe, given a few years and a lot of work — 

— which led to a whole collection of other unwelcome thoughts that Tony really didn't want to deal with, including the possibility that he'd just broken Jarvis in a way that wouldn't be repaired by one night's good sleep. And if he had, there'd be nobody to blame but himself, and nobody else to clean up the mess either. He couldn't shut JARVIS off anymore: he had a living breathing entity on his hands, human in every physical sense that JAMES had been able to measure but as innocent concerning human experience as a creature just arrived from another world.  

And Tony had bitch slapped him for not knowing any better. Yeah — not Tony's best performance in the interpersonal arena, not by a long shot. No wonder Pepper had come on down after tucking Jarvis in and read him the riot act: she might not approve of Tony tapping that, but she also wasn't the kind of person to stand by while someone got stomped, and now that Tony was getting more distance on the events in question — 

"God damn it," he muttered into his coffee cup, and tried to toss back the last mouthful before realizing that he'd drunk it a couple of minutes ago. "Fuck, shit, _fuck!_ If he needs therapy, where the hell am I going to find a reputable psychiatrist who works with incarnate A.I.s?" 

Dummy whirred and clicked his grippers in _Daddy, let me help!_ -speak. Across the lab, Butterfingers and You raised their heads and whistled inquisitively. And Tony just had to smile at that a little, because damn, his _kids_. 

Even if one of them had just cried himself to sleep because his father was a selfish asshole. The windows were fully dark; night had come unnoticed while he'd been slaving over the code. Time to go do something about Jarvis, and hopefully it wouldn't take too much glue to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 

"JAMES," he ordered, "close forensics and lock down for the night." 

" _Very good, Mister Stark."_ Around the lab, screens began to power down. _"Do you have any additional orders?_ " 

Given that he'd just been mucking around in JAMES's mind, he felt it was prudent to reinforce some of the standing directives: "Arm all security systems and — is Pepper gone yet?" 

" _Miss Potts left the building twenty-one minutes and sixteen seconds ago._ "

 _Without even saying goodnight._ Tony winced at this additional evidence of exactly how pissed off she was with him. "Set all doors and windows to Smart Mode. If anyone tries to enter or leave the house, I want to know the second it happens." 

" _Affirmative. Will that be all, Mister Stark?_ " 

He set down his cup on the edge of the desk and headed for the stairwell. "Hold all calls and email notifications, unless they come from Pepper or Rhodey. And keep an eye on the Syrian situation: if they start getting restless again, give me a shout." 

" _As you wish, Mister Stark._ " 

He spun as he walked to address the bots: "You're on deck, Little Piggies. I expect this place to be spick and span when I come in tomorrow morning."  

The machines chirped at him and hurried to obey with greater than usual speed. Tony suppressed a sigh: Jarvis's presence, even in merely human form, had a stabilizing effect on them, and his absence had clearly disconcerted them. Well, Jarvis would be back tomorrow and they'd all be able to put this behind them — he hoped. 

He headed upstairs to his bedroom, half-dreading what he was going to find. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

As it turned out, there wasn't anything to dread at first glance: only his quietly shadowed bedroom, and a long lean body under a warm blanket on the side of the bed closest to the door (Tony's side), lying peacefully still. Jarvis was loosely curled up facing the windows, and Tony knew the sound of his breathing well enough now to determine that he was deeply asleep. His gleaming black shoes were set neatly at the foot of the bed — Pepper's doing, most likely — and on the bedside table a string of tiny blue lights shone, outlining the curve of the cybernetic interface headset's cheek piece.  

There was nothing to see, really. Jarvis wasn't even facing him. But the loose-limbed angles of that spare frame under the blanket did something to Tony's throat, made it tighten in a way that meant he had to swallow once before he was able to speak quietly: "Hey, Jarvis?" 

"Hello, Sir," Jarvis responded — not at once, there was both a discernible pause before speaking and a drag in each syllable when he spoke — and the tightness spread to Tony's heart because he was so damned _unguarded_ , so _willing_ , Tony could run tender fingers through his hair or knot his fist into it and jerk that pale head back, could kiss him or hit him or do anything in between, and Jarvis would submit, his motivations in such flawless harmony with Tony's needs that no sense of discord or resistance dared intrude.  

Even now, clad in thoroughly inconvenient flesh, he desired only to serve. Tony could see it in the way he'd awakened to his maker's softest murmur, could hear it in those three simple syllables, and could _feel_ it somewhere much deeper. In the face of such perfect submission he experienced something rare and utterly disconcerting: it humbled him to the extent that he approached the bed on cautious feet, a supplicant rather than a commander, although he couldn't resist a quip: "What happened to Tony?" 

"My apologies, S— Tony." The effects of the drug blurred every word, but he was trying, he would never stop trying where Tony was concerned, and that only made Tony's regret over his own behaviour even worse. For a fraction of a second he experienced an impulse to fall to his knees, an instinct so heretical that he immediately and forcefully ejected it from his awareness — but it lingered in the tone of his voice, and in the way he had to restrain himself from reaching down and running his hand over Jarvis's hair. 

"I'm the one who should be apologizing here." Which was as close as he ever wanted to come to saying _I'm sorry_ in this lifetime, and he didn't bother to control the way it made him grimace. "After she put you to bed, Pepper came down to the lab and educated me." Jarvis remained silent, his breathing still slow and even, and after a moment Tony yielded enough to settle his hip on the edge of the mattress, his closed fists falling into his lap. "Come on, turn over. I can't have this conversation when you won't even look at me." 

It took him a few seconds to comply, but when he shifted onto his back his pale blue eyes were too bright as they looked Tony over. His slender hands, limply open on his stomach, twitched and shifted as if he wanted to reach up and touch the bandaged wounds his attention lingered on. "Oh," he slurred, "oh, _Sir_ …" 

The pain in those eyes, the concern — it hit too close to home, far too effortlessly. Tony tried to deflect it with a smile. "See, buddy? It's okay. I'm okay." 

"Two cracked ribs," Jarvis recited, his gaze slowly shifting to Tony's left bicep where bandages changed the silhouette of his t-shirt's tight fit. "A torn trapezius muscle. Over sixty-eight millilitres of blood —" 

"Don't." It felt like the word was torn from him, a wild counter-blow because he couldn't bear that solicitous analytical touch, not now, not when he'd struck Jarvis across the face only hours earlier and the memory of it was abruptly so bright it burned. "Don't, Jarvis. I'm alive and it's all stuff that can heal. That's what counts." 

For a span of seconds Jarvis simply scanned him again, from face to hips and back again, before saying something rather unexpected: "I thought he was going to kill you." 

 _Yeah, well, so did I for a second there,_ Tony almost replied, but figured that would likely just make things worse. He shrugged and grinned instead. "Yeah, well… I'm a lot tougher than people give me credit for. Never thought you'd be one of the doubting Thomases though." 

"I —" Jarvis said, but the next word audibly caught in his throat as a gleam of outright moisture welled into his eyes although his face remained serene, and yes, Tony was irritated by it, but not half as annoyed as he was alarmed: _Oh shit, more tears, I thought he was supposed to be sedated and I don't_ ** _do_** _'comfort', what the hell am I supposed to —?_  

"Hey." When in doubt, default to 'gruff' and 'decisive' and a firm hand on Jarvis's shoulder, urging him to change position. "Move over. That's it — now, come here. See? I'm fine. It's all over." 

The second Tony was lying on his left side he realized his mistake — the torn muscle in his shoulder, which had quieted to a dull roar, fired up with a sharp ache of torn tissues — but Jarvis had already settled, no, _melted_ into his embrace. The way he turned his face against Tony's shoulder, closing his eyes as he silently wept… Tony's heart did another slow flip in his chest, this time in recognition. JARVIS hadn't possessed the requisite mental or physical structures to experience emotional attachment before — but this was a radically different framing device, and humans, like the great apes they'd evolved from, were instinctually motivated to connect with others of their kind. _That's all this is: one monkey grooming another monkey, a mechanical release of oxytocin. Pepper couldn't have been more wrong if she'd tried._  

After a long pause Jarvis, his tears still slowly flowing, whispered: "You can't let JAMES control the suit until he's more advanced." 

Which made Tony grimace all over again. "I don't have much choice. Six to eight months of downtime isn't an option." 

"There is an alternative." He sounded calm, a slight quaver infecting his voice but each word otherwise as measured as if he were articulating through speakers rather than with a human mouth. "You could modify the cybernetic interface to transfer my engrams into JAMES's matrix." 

Tony's memory produced the relevant data while his right hand began to stroke Jarvis's head, combing slow fingers through his silky flaxen hair. "We already discussed that, remember? Too great a possibility of brain damage." 

"If it keeps you safe," Jarvis countered evenly, "any collateral damage to me is irrelevant." 

He couldn't help but laugh his derision at the notion, cupping the nape of that slender neck and giving it a little shake of rebuke. "Man, that tranquillizer must really be spacing you out! _No,_ not an option, and we're both too out of it to have this conversation right now." Which was nothing but the truth: now that he was horizontal, even in a position that put painful weight on his damaged shoulder and arm, the sum of the day's energy expenditures was rapidly adding up and his eyelids were growing heavier with every passing second. Besides, even while weeping Jarvis felt criminally good against him, like familiarity and security and home all wrapped up in one package, and he kissed the pale human forehead with genuine affection. "Go back to sleep, baby, and don't worry about it tonight. We'll talk in the morning." 

"I won't let anything happen to you." Softly, yet with a sudden trace of steel the tranquillizers couldn't subdue. "I certainly won't let you die." 

This time Tony's snort of laughter was incredulous, and not a little uneasy. "What, you want a suit of your own now?" 

"Perhaps." He sounded so matter-of-fact. "Would you create one for me?" 

The thought of Jarvis in combat was as ridiculous ( _but he'd fight so hard for me, he'd never give up_ ) as it was disquieting ( _he could be the one bleeding, no,_ ** _not_** _going to happen!_ ), so Tony hugged him a little closer and corrected him gently: "You're no fighter, Jarvis." 

"I could be, for you," Jarvis mused, and he sounded so certain that Tony's uneasiness spiked to anxiety for one heart-stopping second, because in that second he experienced something almost akin to premonition: Jarvis defending him, those narrow hands dripping carmine and no regret whatsoever in those eyes of aquamarine, because the only blood that mattered in the shedding was Tony's blood — all other injuries, all other pain, all other deaths were fundamentally irrelevant. 

 _He'd burn the world for you,_ a voice in the back of Tony's mind whispered with absolute conviction. _Didn't you know that? Haven't you always known that?_  

He pushed it away so quickly that it might as well not have existed, exchanging it for a wry chuckle and another kiss pressed to Jarvis's temple. "Boy," he joked, "that Xanax is really good stuff! Sleep now. Just this once I'll let you get away with sacking out in your suit." 

"Appreciated, Sir…" He sounded like he was already three-quarters asleep again, managing to drape his left arm loosely over Tony's waist just before his entire body went completely limp. The flow of tears tapered off as Tony continued to hold him, and in short order the familiar cadence of Jarvis-is-sleeping respiration reasserted itself. 

Tony watched him in silence, relieved that the situation hadn't degenerated into another episode of hysterics — and in spite of himself, quietly hurting in a way that went deeper than the injuries JAMES had caused. The inner wound was a tangle of emotions both dark and bright, but because this was one of Tony's not-so-hot days to begin with he knew he wasn't up to teasing them apart at the moment: he only recognized that there were elements there he didn't want to think about too closely, things that would activate into further emotional surgeries if he poked them too hard, and he'd already taken more than enough damage for one day on all fronts. 

"You were supposed to make my life easier," he muttered into Jarvis's hair, but there was only a trace of rancour in the words because Jarvis was his, had arisen from him, and he wasn't in the habit of actively hating himself. Jarvis's only reaction was a tiny murmur and a drowsy nuzzle against his throat, prompting a flare of sweetness in Tony's chest even more disconcerting than the bitterness because the pain was an old friend, but this… 

Change was acceptable on his terms. This had come unasked, and dwelt as close to him as his own heartbeat. How the hell could he work it to his advantage? 

It took him an even longer span of minutes to calm the inner turmoil enough to finally close his eyes. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

Seeing Jarvis cry had been bad, because it had shaken Tony's emotional inviolability and on days like this he already felt like one exposed maladjusted nerve. But what came next was far, far worse.

 A flat beeping alert from JAMES managed to penetrate his heavier-than-usual sleep: " _Mr. Stark, there has been a perimeter breach._ " 

"Wha' —?" Even half-dead and groggy from the painkillers he'd finally slipped away from Jarvis just long enough to take, he knew instantly that something wasn't right. His left hand fumbled across the bed: empty sheets, no trace of body heat. Jarvis was gone, and Jarvis never left the bed at night without rousing Tony to let him know that he was going to be temporarily leaving his post (which was precisely how Jarvis viewed the situation, of that Tony had not the slightest doubt). "… the hell… JAMES, report!" 

" _Jarvis has exited the building,_ " JAMES recited impassively as Tony struggled into a sitting position, shaking his head to try to clear the cobwebs — carefully, because his left trapezius muscle and every other muscle complex on that side had stiffened up pretty damned impressively.  

"The —" Which only deepened Tony's confusion — and sparked an acid clench of annoyance deep in his gut. "Where the hell's he going?" 

" _Unknown. He did, however, vocalize a farewell to you immediately before exiting. Shall I display the video?_ " 

"Yes," Tony ground out — God, he would be _so fucking grateful_ when JAMES grew an ounce of extrapolative ability — and when JAMES projected a virtual screen on to the window glass he managed to turn his upper body without making left shoulder shriek too loudly. The video was clearly from Security Camera #5 in the lab, which showed Jarvis seated at his desk and looking directly upward into the lens, while the monitors in front of him flashed with the red symbols of a full lockout. 

" _I'm sorry, Sir,_ " he was saying in a loud clear voice, his expression calmly determined. " _As you can see, I did my best to compel JAMES to comply._ " A pause as he continued to gaze into the camera, and Tony interjected: "Hold playback. What the hell was he trying to do?" 

" _He attempted to initiate the engram transfer procedure initially discussed on —_ " 

"I remember," Tony snapped, his anger and consternation ramping up exponentially. Damn it, Jarvis _knew_ that the transfer wasn't an option! No wonder JAMES had locked him out, and now Tony was going to have to untangle the activated security protocols. Fuck fuck _fuck!_ Disobeying orders, leaving the house without permission — Tony's voice fell to a nasty growl. "Resume playback." 

On the virtual screen, Jarvis cocked his head slightly, his gaze unwavering. At last he said: " _Thank you for my existence. It has been a pleasure to serve you to the best of my ability. Goodbye._ "  

It took a second for the words to fully sink into Tony's brain, because they made no sense — and then suddenly they did, turning the red burn of outrage into a white-hot thrill of alarm and disbelief. _He can't, that's not, he's not programmed, it's completely illogical, it's —_ "Locate him! Where's he —?" 

Another virtual screen sprang into existence. On the original display, in the past, Jarvis removed his cybernetic interface headset and rose from his chair. On the new display,  in the present, he stood at the edge of the roof of Tony's mansion with his shoulders squared and his head bowed, looking down toward the — 

Tony's thrill of alarm became a massive electric jolt, a tidal wave of ice water cascading over every nerve in his body. He was on his feet and running before any conscious volition could intrude, and his brain didn't catch up with his body until he was hurtling up the stairs toward the service exit to the intermediate level rooftop, seizing the bannisters with both hands and using his arms to pull himself up even faster, slamming the door open and _Oh God no, please, let him still be there, I can't be too late, he can't_ — 

"Jarvis!" It came out as something between an enraged roar and a breathless gasp, because all the muscles down the left side of his back were seizing up and he couldn't breathe properly, and it didn't matter because Jarvis was on the verge of taking that last step and — "What the _hell_ are you —?" 

He was _right on the edge_ and Tony was too far away to stop him. But he paused, oh thank _fuck,_ he turned and he gazed right into Tony's eyes, and instinct prompted Tony to approach him carefully, every step on eggshells, because one feather's-weight of force too much and he'd be gone. _That's right, J, keep looking at me…_ "Jarvis. Come away from the edge." 

"Sir." And Jarvis smiled at him, so warm, as if he wasn't standing on the threshold of oblivion. It was the most open expression Tony had ever seen him wear — and it was full of love, brilliant and undeniable. No pain in the world could possibly compare to that revelation. "Tony. It's better this way." 

 _Oh fuck, J, no, don't do this to me —_ "No." He shook his head once, decisively. "No, it sure as fuck _is not_ , and you can't, I forbid it — do you hear me, Jarvis?" He forced himself to come to a halt ten feet away, _can't risk pushing him too much_ , and held out his right hand, strong and steady in spite of the animal panic screaming in every nerve. "Now come back here. That's an order, damn you!" 

"Are you quite certain?" Jarvis looked down at the water again, and in his profile Tony could see solemn speculation. "I would never fail you again." 

 _Oh God, oh shit, is that what this is about?_ Guilt and terror cracked his voice — "You haven't even failed me _once!_ " — and when Jarvis looked round again in obvious surprise he put the full weight of command into every word: "Jarvis, _come here!_ Don't make me tell you again!" 

He turned away from the edge. He came, his pale eyes silently questioning. And when he was there in front of Tony, alive, Tony seized both his hands and dragged him close and wrapped him in a fierce embrace, _safe, safe, safe,_ and buried his face against Jarvis's shoulder and just breathed the scent of him, _almost gone forever,_ and for a long span of seconds all Tony could feel was his own heart breaking and bleeding and screaming without the mercy of a single cognitive filter, because it had all happened too fast for him to try to put any face on it other than its own.  

"Sir," Jarvis said at last. His right hand came to rest on Tony's left bicep, and Tony barely felt the flare of pain through the clamouring in his head: _alive, alive, still here to call me Sir, still —_ "Sir, your shoulder." 

"It's fine," Tony rasped, barely a choked whisper, and held him even tighter as he tried to get his mental legs under him again. When his brain finally managed to stagger upright the first words out were barely coherent: "Okay. Better, right? If I let go, you're not going to —?" 

He couldn't finish the sentence, but of course Jarvis understood. "No, Sir. You've just forbidden it." 

"Damn straight I have!" He permitted himself one last shiver and a squeeze of Jarvis's narrow waist before letting him go, but slowly, studying his face and ready to grab him again if he so much as _looked_ in the direction of the ocean. Now that the crisis was past and their bodies were apart the night wind went right through Tony's t-shirt like a knife, but that discomfort, like the pain of his overstressed shoulder, was inconsequential. "Right. Let's get you inside. Then I'm going to make us some hot cocoa, and then we're going to _talk_." 

Jarvis nodded, his expression serene, and when Tony turned him around and put his hand on the small of his back to propel him toward the open door he did not resist. How much of that was genuine peace of mind and how much of it was some horrible form of shock, Tony was definitely not looking forward to finding out. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

He got Jarvis safely down to the piano lounge; he settled him on the couch; he had JAMES fire up the fireplace to warm him up; he made sure he wasn't going anywhere before heading down to the lab's kitchen. He was just about the plug in the kettle when the shakes hit, and after he'd managed to slot the plug into the socket on the third try he locked both hands onto the edge of the counter and stared at the little blinking red light that would turn green when the water had boiled, trying to will some strength back into his watery knees. 

This was a feeling he knew far too well. He'd faced it many times in Afghanistan and on numerous nights since: the aftermath of an adrenaline surge provoked by the emotional impact of a traumatic event. He just — 

— he didn't — 

— he was a champion at making himself believe all kinds of crazy shit, stuff like _I could fire Pepper any time I wanted to_ , or _Obie's betrayal didn't gut me like a fish_ , or _I don't give a fuck that my father cared less about me than he did about what tie he was going to wear on any given day_. Given enough time, he could convince himself that the sky was bright pink and full of flocks of flying pigs, emotionally speaking. 

This — 

He didn't have time to put a spin on it. All he had was the breathtaking shock of a sucker punch to the balls: _Jarvis almost took a walk off the roof of my house._ And right behind it, like the stab and twist of a knife into his perineum: _He wanted to erase himself because of me?_  

No. No, no, _fuck_ no, there had to be some other factor, a malfunction based on the — 

 _Oh yeah?_ The black voice of self-hatred, which was always lurking somewhere below the surface of his Olympic-level pride and self-sufficiency, hissed in his mind's ear like a trickle of acid: _And who, exactly, gave him the idea that he'd failed you in the first place? Pepper? Maybe she doesn't like him much now and she likes the thought that you're screwing him even less, but she's not_ ** _that_** _cruel._  

"No," he muttered out loud, staring at the kettle as it heated and running his right hand over his face (dragging on the rasp of stubble and the twist of his narrowed lips) and trembling with fresh nervous energy, because _fuck_ , it had been that close. One more step, and this was completely insane because Jarvis was the one who needed _him_ , not the other way around. 

 _Liar,_ a different voice murmured, hideously calm and implacable. _You couldn't get through a single day without JARVIS, he kept you safe and kept your secrets and controlled the armour and went places with you intellectually that nobody else could go — and now this, now you can touch him and see him look at you the way he did when he was right on the verge of dying, and you're really surprised that the thought of watching him commit suicide hurts this much?_  

"He's convenient," Tony growled into the palm of his hand, burying his face against it, closing his eyes tight. "A useful tool for the right jobs. And not even that so much, not anymore, not after this little —" 

 _He's_ ** _necessary_** _,_ the new voice stated, _and that hasn't changed, has it? Does it really matter —_  

"Shut _up!_ " He opened his eyes and yanked two mugs off the cup shelf before grabbing the box of hot chocolate envelopes, occupying his hands by tearing open the packets. Brown powder drifted over the cup rims from his trembling fingers. "I am _not_ having this conversation with myself, because I'm not crazy." Behind him, from halfway across the lab, he heard the tiny whine as one of the bots — Butterfingers, from the pitch of the noise — turned its cameras in his direction in response to the stressed inflection of his muttered words: "He's a program locked inside a meat suit, and he's potentially fucked because I can't even get in there to rejig his scrambled code." 

A pause, still painful but mercifully silent. For a couple of seconds Tony thought he was out of the woods. Then, just after he'd turned the kettle off and was about to pour the hot-enough-to-provide-comfort-but-cool-enough-to-comfortably-drink water into the mugs, Reality hit him with a parting shot: _All the nights he's lain with you, keeping you warm and keeping watch, you haven't had any nightmares. Not a single one. Is there something you'd like to share with the class, Mr. Stark?_  

He had no idea how to answer that — he couldn't answer, because the shape of what he deliberately didn't know was big enough to choke him — so he switched gears and locked down into 'deal with practicalities' mode:  fill the cups with a rock-steady hand, stir up the cocoa, toss the spoon into the sink and head silently back upstairs with five potential scenarios for how to handle his now quite possibly insane A.I. running through his head, depending on what he found when he got there. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the retelling of key events of "Lessons in Compensation and Equivalency", from Tony's POV.

Jarvis was still sitting on the couch — of course he was, if he'd moved more than six inches in any direction JAMES would have set off every alarm in the place, as per Tony's instructions — and in the glow of the gas-fed flames his expression was calmly expectant… what Tony saw of it, anyway, a general impression as he looked past it toward the windows. Instead he deposited the white mug on the coffee table in front of his wayward A.I. while keeping the black one for himself, turning away as he straightened to direct his glare at the fire. His right hand rose to clamp tightly onto the nape of his own neck as if to hold his head in place, because as much as he wanted to look he didn't quite dare. 

He didn't want to see what was in Jarvis's eyes now. He couldn't afford it. He had to keep control of this situation, and that meant getting to the bottom of the unthinkable. 

 _Fuck that shit, I'm a scientist, nothing is unthinkable — just varying degrees of improbable._ "Just so I'm perfectly clear on this," he said evenly after a tense couple of seconds, "you were going to jump off the roof of my house?" 

He sensed Jarvis leaning forward to pick up the mug. Inhaling softly. Taking a small sip. "Yes, Sir." 

"Into the ocean?" No tremor, in spite of the way his heart hitched in his chest at the thought. Good. He could do this. 

"Indeed, Sir." 

He was trying to keep a lid on things, really he was, but in spite of his best intentions his internal thermostat was steadily creeping into the red. He tipped back a mouthful of warm cocoa, scarcely tasting it. "Please, tell me you just wanted to go for a moonlight swim and were being incredibly stupid about it." 

"Sir," Jarvis responded, and fell silent. Not surprising, when the alternative was: _Actually, Sir, I was attempting to commit suicide when you happened to interrupt me, and I regret that you witnessed something that upset you, but rest assured that next time I'll get it —_  

"No." He heard the growl of fury in his own voice and felt the snarl curling his lips, but the bright sting at the rims of his eyelids was far worse. "No, Jarvis. _Fuck_ no! You don't even get to _think_ about that, you hear me?" 

Jarvis, in contrast, sounded perfectly reasonable: "I'm afraid I can't help it, Sir. Parts of this body's cognitive processes are evidently not under my complete control." 

 _He's capable of that much objectivity, thank motherfucking God_. Tony dropped his right hand to his side — and dropped, at the same time, the 'I'm bigger than you' and 'I'm locked up' postures he just realized he'd subconsciously adopted — but the hand insisted on clenching into a fist anyway. "Embodied cognitive theory," he stated, staring resolutely at the flames like he'd found the answers in their heart, "yeah, you're riding a red-hot — and obviously depressed — limbic system right now, but Jarvis, I'm telling you, suicide is _not_ an option."  

And now he had to look, intending to flicker his gaze sidelong for a fraction of a second in rebuke — only to find it caught and held on those serene features regarding him with a quiet expectancy far more elegant than the insensate beauty of the fire. They flayed him open like a set of keys slipping into a series of locks (almost gone forever) and he couldn't look away, he had to turn and come round the coffee table and sit down on Jarvis's left to stare at close range, while his pain and anger parsed out of him in a sequence of deceptively simple words: "It's _never_ an option. It would kill me if I lost you, do you understand me? It would literally kill me. Especially that way." 

For a couple of seconds he wondered if any of it was getting through, or if Jarvis was too far gone in whatever his current state of mind was to absorb what was being conveyed… but then he saw the way those pale eyebrows tightened, and the subtle change of expression from serenity to perturbation, and oh yeah — Jarvis got it. He understood. The shame, though — Tony could have done without seeing that. He wasn't surprised when Jarvis looked away, half-turning his shoulders to avert his face as completely as he could without actually disengaging — but he sure as hell wasn't going to let it pass, either.  

He laid his right hand on the left forearm of Jarvis's rather rumpled suit, annoyed but coaxing: "Look at me, Jarvis. Come on, turn around." And after a moment Jarvis did, even though Tony wished he hadn't because his face was so _open_ this time, full of yearning and shame and sorrow — and regret, the kind of regret that a gentle and beautifully designed creature like this should never have needed to experience. It implied that he was broken — and worse, that he was lost, beyond all hope of repair or redemption. And it drove home the truth in a way that took Tony's breath away. 

He'd thought he understood. 

But the way Jarvis was looking at him now… love and pain so often went hand in hand, and that was a lesson he wished that Jarvis had never had to learn either. But it was all there, and even Tony's Olympic-level powers of denial couldn't blunt the impact. 

"My God," he said slowly, "you were really going to do it," _because of me_ , and he felt the flush of anger drain from his cheeks, leaving cold pallor behind. "If I'd been a couple of seconds slower getting up those stairs —" 

"You would likely never have found my body," Jarvis assured him at once, as if that would _help_. 

"And I never would have stopped looking," Tony countered. The ache in the vicinity of his heart became an outright pang of grief and he had to look away, the sting in his eyes becoming a bright prickle of threatening moisture, his voice growing hoarse: "Whenever you feel like this I need you to talk to me, J — I don't care what I'm doing at the time, interrupt it. Promise me you'll do that, no matter what." 

It was a piss-poor offer of comfort, worse than something out of an After School Special, but Jarvis conceded at once, although he sounded faintly puzzled: "Of course, Sir." He needed more, hell, he _deserved_ more, so Tony drew a deep breath and sniffled (he didn't cry, _he didn't cry_ , but oh _fuck_ the way Jarvis was looking at him still) and turned a steady gaze back to Jarvis's questioning face. 

"Good." He tightened his grip on Jarvis's forearm, then repeated: "That's good. You can talk to me about anything, buddy — you've never shut me out before, and I'm not about to let you start now. Is that clear?" 

Better. At least it didn't sound like something a fourteen-year-old girl would say to her BFF, and Jarvis nodded, recognizing the tone of command. "Yes, Sir." 

"Good." _Geez, get off your ass and find a different word, Stark — and stop sniffling! God!_ He slipped in a note of impatience: "Now what the hell set this off? Is it because I yelled at you? Tell me you're not that sensitive, because I yell a lot, you've always known that." 

In the firelight Jarvis's eyebrows shone like white gold, drawing together in dismay. "I'd… rather not say." 

Which was almost enough to make Tony laugh at how sad it all was, because if you'd asked him for a Top Three list of shit he'd never have expected Jarvis to come up with, that phrase would have been right up there. "You don't get to lie to me either, even by omission." 

Jarvis didn't argue the point. "You stated that if you had any sense of self-preservation, you would send me away." 

It took Tony a moment to track the reference down — dinner yesterday,  _"If I had a lick of self-preservation, I'd set you up with a nice little house in the Hamptons and only visit you every other weekend."_ — and when he did he stared in outright disbelief. "It was a _joke!_ Obviously a piss-poor one, but still…" 

"And then," Jarvis continued, his smooth tone underlaid with a note of distress that made Tony's heart clench all over again, "my deplorable conduct in the face of your injuries compelled you to banish me from your presence. Upon reflection, I can only conclude that your initial assessment was —" 

"Jarvis." _Oh shit, of course, he never forgets anything, even now, even if it's the_ ** _wrong_** _things…_ Tony looked away again, closed his eyes, then set down his mug and rubbed his face slowly with his free hand, trying to scrub away the weariness — and maybe his own culpability. A long exasperated sigh escaped before he could muster the words: "How many times do I have to tell you that I'm keeping you here, with me? Because I'll keep telling you until you get it straight, that's not a problem, you know I've never had a problem repeating things." 

"But Sir," and he sounded so perplexed under whatever shock was still affecting him, "I've proven incapable of —" 

Fuck it. Tony really didn't have time for this shit. "You really think we could get through five minutes around here without you?" he interrupted bluntly. 

"Today I could do nothing to assist or protect you," Jarvis pointed out. "I conspicuously failed you. And when JAMES is fully operational you will no longer require my assistance in the lab either." 

"Oh God…" His heart swelled ridiculously, nearly giddy, and this time he had to laugh, because the alternative was crying and his father had taught him well. "We'll always need you. The bots would miss you like crazy, and — just no. I couldn't do it." He warmed to his subject, smiling almost fondly as irritation gave way totally to… something else. Something that was probably dangerous if he gave it too much thought. "You're my greatest ever creation to date — you know that." 

Jarvis didn't seem to know how to take the sudden kindness. He dropped his gaze again, looking quietly miserable. "But I'm not… not anymore," he whispered, barely more than an inflected breath, as if he almost didn't dare to speak. "I'm merely human now, just like the six point seven billion others walking the face of this planet." 

"Never," Tony said with absolute conviction, and took hold of Jarvis's chin to persuade him to look up again, to meet a gaze both wry and tender (and _tenderness is weakness in a man_ , but fuck you Dad, these were extraordinary circumstances and what mattered was what was needed, not what was advisable). "Come on, J," he said gently, "you're still _you_ inside this meat suit. You think I can't see that? And don't you dare think, for one solitary second, that I'll ever forget it." 

Jarvis was looking at him with something like amazement. "Sir," he said, and Tony could actually see him opening up, right down to the root of a suffering that was probably too deep to be expressed in words. He leaned in, pressing his forehead to his creator's and closing his eyes, his breath catching in his chest as he started to shake. "Tony —" 

"That's it," Tony soothed, and got rid of the mug of cocoa Jarvis was holding before wrapping both arms around him and holding on tight, while he trembled and tried to burrow his face into the side of Tony's neck as if he wanted to hide from the world. "Let it out," he whispered while Jarvis clung to him, panting and whimpering — but not crying, or at least not much, not enough to stop him from snuffling in deep breaths as if drawing the scent of Tony's skin and hair, while Tony kept up a low murmur: "It's okay, baby — Daddy's got you, you're not going anywhere, we're both staying right here… good boy, that's it, see, you're just fine…" 

It took a while before the agitated rhythms of Jarvis's body began to slow down again, but Tony could afford to be patient — and to pray that the deepest wound was being lanced, all the poison flooding out of it in those choked moans, and that Jarvis would be left clean when it was done. At last he simply held on to Tony, his face buried against the shoulder of his t-shirt, and gasped thinly: "Sir… I — I'm sorry, Sir —" 

"Don't be." Tony kissed his ear lightly, almost jokingly, then whispered into it: "What, did you honestly think I was going to throw you out the back door like one of my dates." Jarvis nodded jerkily, and Tony snorted soft laughter. "Well, now I'm just insulted." 

"It was a reasonable hypothesis," Jarvis breathed, "given your observed behaviour. You don't like other people much." 

Tony had to smile at that. Well, smile wider, in all honesty. "Which would be a real problem if you were a person. Which you're not." 

He sounded genuinely curious: "Then what, precisely, am I?" 

"You're _you_ , baby." He loosened his grasp enough to push Jarvis away a few inches, to take hold of the nape of his neck and press forehead to forehead, gazing into his watery blue eyes with the force of absolute conviction. "And you're mine. You'll always be mine. And I take care of the things that belong to me — the things that _matter._ "

 And there it was: as close to the truth as he ever wanted to come, and maybe as close as he was ever capable of coming. Jarvis must have heard it too, because exquisite gratitude infused his expression and when he closed his eyes warm tears slipped free. "Sir. _Thank_ you, Sir." 

 _How the hell could I_ ** _not_** _love you,_ Tony's heart declared with complete disregard for anything approaching common sense, _when I made you perfect and you're so damned sweet?_ The words swelled into his throat, threatening emotional anarchy, but instead he tightened his grip on Jarvis's neck and spoke sternly: "But let's get a few things straight…" 

Jarvis listened to orders, bright and attentive, smiling as if he _knew_. And being JARVIS, even trapped in a cage of flesh and blood and bone — well, maybe he did after all, since figuring out Tony's motivations and needs had always been his _raison d'etre_. 

Tony pushed that thought away well before it could actually become something terrifying, choosing instead to concentrate on laying down the parameters for the future — and on getting Jarvis safely back to bed, which turned out to be not such a safe move after all. 

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
